DARKLING ECLIPSE

"(...) Creating a link with La Rocque’s She-wolf as well as Luke Painter’s portraits, mask-like visages haunt the work of Ayumi Rahn. In paintings based on sculptures from a myriad of sources, from Brancusi, to African figurines, to Greek heads, Rahn portrays hovering forms with inconstant qualities. Reminiscent of Freud’s collection of objects and antiquities, and indirectly all that it contentiously signified, the objects of Rahn’s fascination act as ghosts, changelings or totems, symbolising access to another realm that remains locked inside their passive objecthood, perhaps forgotten. Re-portraying them, Rahn further abstracts the original objects and their significance – sometimes eclipsing them with a gauze of pattern, other times simply repositioning them through her own subjective representation, she re-enforces their shifting disembodied condition. (...)"

extract from exhibition text Darkling Eclipse, curated by Leisure Projects (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley), Kunstverein das weisse haus, 2008, Vienna